February 18th, the opening head game

Well,

The opening was very interesting. The index is doing what I suggested it would but I got shaken out before getting into any trades. I intended to get in on the initial roller coaster ride but didn't expect two things:

1) it happened very fast off the start
2) HGU and HGD BOTH went down at the same time

In theory the two funds are the inverse of each other proportionally based on percentage changes, with some margin allowed for trading spreads. So, if HGU goes down then it stands to reason that HGD should go up.

BUT THAT DID NOT HAPPEN! In the first two minutes Global Gold (GD) dropped about $1, HGU dropped close to 10 cents (which is about right) and HGD also dropped about 5 cents...HUH? It should have gone up by about that amount.

I seriously considered a quick momentum reversal play in minute two as I figured that there must have been a glitch in HGD and it will quickly head back up...but that is a very early entry and prone to problems with a market order....with a regular stock that is. ETFs seem to work differently when it comes to higher volume activity. My hesitation was my downfall on this move.

So everything settled out in minute three and was back on track...except that I was not on board. Minute three moved too far too fast for me to feel comfortable getting in but I should have gone with my estimation of the movement that I made yesterday and just bit the bullet and ordered.

Alas, HGD has moved 40 cents from open and 50 cents from where I would have tried to get in had I not hesitated.

So now I just wait for things to settle out and see where the rest of the day leads me.

Jeff.

February 17th...the fake returns for a day...

Today, the day after the North American holiday, President's Day, and Family Day up here would not have been agood day for me to typically be in the market, so I hung back.

The Global Gold index (GD) started high as the price of gold jumped yesterday...and it only stands to reason that gold related stocks, and therefore indices, would rise accordingly. As it was GD started near the top of my pivot points, which puts me out of my "zone". So I decided to do some technical fake trading to see what I could stirup, and to keep me on my toes.

I'll post the GD chart here with a different annotation than normal. The red boxes are the HGD trades start and stop times and prices and the green are for HGU. The circles are my break even or losers, and they will bee noted as well.

Given the start of the day I figured that it was going to be a flatish morning with a decent gap fade in the afternoon as soon as the 200sma caught up again. I didn't get the gap fade but did see a return to below the opening price, so a little fade. Perhaps the rest will happen tomorrow. I would just buy a full load of HGD at the top but I don't trust picking a top outside of the pivot point ranges. I ended up having a go at a couple of points and alternated buying HGU and HGD figuring that I might get lucky and catch a top...no such luck. The nice double hump could have given me a technical entry between 1250h and 1315h but I was not watching at that time...I probably would not have taken it anyway as my morning trading did not produce any great numbers to use as a buffer.

Once the price crossed the 200sma (green line) I jumped in (yah, I should have jumped in for real here as this is a close to a sure thing as I can think of in trading) right where the price popped back up for a quick test. The only reason I would let this trade go so long is that I am gaining confidence in my afternoon calls and the HGD profit went negative on me. I thought about it at the solid red R3, and again at R2+1/2 but bailed before that line was crossed. I got back in as the line was recrossed for a last trade to top things off for the day.

A note about technical trading...even though pivot points are such they are not determined on the fly so I consider them a bit different. The red and blue lines are the 30sma and 50 sma respectively. Often they indicate a trending period and they did just that in textbook style today. Right up to 1230h the price stayed mostly above the 30sma which stayed above the 50sma. in the afternoon the reverse occurred for some nice downtrending action.

Here are the trades, all the HGD trades are in the $7 range and the HGU are in the $15 range.

1023h Buy $7.43 Sell $7.48 Gain 5 cents ps Return 0.7%
1028h Buy $7.43 Sell $7.43 Gain 0 cents ps Return 0%
1055h Buy $7.30 Sell $7.34 Gain 4 cents ps Return 0.5%
1124h Buy $7.31 Sell $7.29 Gain -2 cents ps Return -0.3%
1127h Buy $15.73 Sell $15.83 Gain 10 cents ps Return 0.6%
1138h Buy $7.24 Sell $7.27 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.4%
1156h Buy $7.19 Sell $7.22 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.4%
1202h Buy $15.86 Sell $15.98 Gain 12 cents ps Return 0.8%
1334h Buy $7.24 Sell $7.42 Gain 18 cents ps Return 2.4%
1501h Buy $7.42 Sell $7.50 Gain 8 cents ps Return 1%

For any prices under $7.30 I bought 500 shares, higher than that would be 400 shares then HGU in the $15 range is at 200 shares...just due to the limitation of capital in the account.

The final tally was $116 net, 2.9% return based on a $4000 capital base...commissions in the morning killed me due to the small moves but I decided that I need to be in more trades in order to be there when the price does move more substantially. At noon I was only ahead $10 net. At least it would be tax free.

So tomorrow I am looking forward to a better day trading as I hopefully can just do some real trades. I do expect a possible drop in prices over the course of the day and even a jump after the 200sma crossing, a bit of a reverse of today. We'll see though...the proof will be in the pudding.

Jeff.

Horizons BetaPro Exchange Traded Funds

More on the ETFs, specifically the Horizons offerings.

Here is a link to their website for any who want to do more reading:

Horizons BetaPro ETFs

Something that I did not mention in my last post was how these folks are doing what they are doing. Unlike a typical fund, like a mutual fund, they are not buying a bunch of stocks in the index to emulate the index, nor are they buying any of the underlying commodities. They deal in futures contracts instead...due to a few reasons that they mention in their FAQ.

Here is a complete list of their products:

Horizons BetaPro ETF Summary

I just did a quick check on a leverage comparison for HGU and Global Gold. (GG)

Since Oct 25th (I just picked a nice long gain as an example) to Feb 11th

GG gained $187.55 or 123%
HGU gained $11.18 or 286%

There is mention of rebalancing and daily valuation of the fund, so I suppose this seeming disparity comes from the effect of some level of compounding at work, and it was mentioned on the HBP site but I discounted it as marketing hyperbole...perhaps not.

This does make a good case for beating the market performance. Seeing as 123% is still a good return for a 3 month investment, 246% would be spectacular and an extra 40% definitely adds a bit of gravy. I expect something similar following the HGD bear fund in a down turn...

Jul 15th to October 26th, another arbitrary period the GG dropped over three months.

GG lost $224.14 or 81.3%
HGD gained $68.45 or 187%

Well, considering that gold was dropping, overall, this is a great way to turn the loss on it's head.

Interesting is that the additional gain over the straight 2x leverage is 15% greater than the leveraged percentage return.

None of this makes much difference in my daytrading scenario but certainly makes a great case for using ETFs in my future longer term investments.

From the listing of ETFs that Horizons has you can do the exact same thing with financials, oil, energy, bonds and other popular indexs. I was playing with HGD as a bear strategy against the true stock TLM (Talisman Energy) and earlier I was playing with HGD again AEM (Agnico Mines). I now firmly believe that I have found an alternative to stocks completely.

The funny thing is that six months ago I would have scoffed at the idea of trading ETFs.

Jeff.

Exchange Traded Funds

I decided that I should probably know more about the Exchange traded Funds (ETFs) as they seem to be what I have gravitated towards for my intraday trading.

I have noticed some interesting correlations and some anomalies between the Horizons Beta Pro Global Gold bull and Bear funds and the actual Global Gold index itself which lead me to do some reading to see if I could explain some of what I was seeing. I am not certain why but I was treating the bull and bear ETFs (HGU and HGD respectively) as if they were separate stocks and using the S&P TSX Global Gold index for reference. This has not been working for me as well as I anticipated.

So, the short story is that the two funds that I am playing with are inverse funds and leveraged by 2 times.

Horizons BetaPro Global Gold Bull Plus Exchange Traded Fund, HGU on the TSX.

The fund is directly tied to the performance of the S&P TSX Global Gold Index and leveraged 2 times. I thought that a leverage like this was a direct calculation of 1 penny equals 2 pennies so I had some trouble imagining the valuation of the fund compared to the stock and envisioning the movement it just looked wrong, so now I will clarify this.

If the Global Gold rises by 1 % then the ETF rises by 2%. So each $100 invested will return $2 at the end of the day. If it drops by 1% the the fund drops by 2% and you lose $2.

Unlike a stock using margin as leverage this does not put you in the situation of having a margin call and potentially losing more than you put in as you can only lose a percentage of what you invest, similar to a stock bought with cash.

The next day you start out with $102 and it rises 1% again, the ETF rises 2% and you gain $2.04. Effectively compounding daily. The reverse scenario has you losing $1.96. Again this is not unlike a regular stock as a daily percentage change is still based on the day's opening price.

Horizons BetaPro Global Gold Bear Plus Exchange Traded Fund, HGD on the TSX.

Same as above in the reverse direction.

The interesting part about using these funds to trade, as I am, is that I should be able to track only the Global Gold index and make trades between the two funds, HGU and HGD, while only following the index and ignoring the funds themselves. I have been doing this part way as I have followed HGU mainly and traded HGD just by that chart and it seems to get me where I want when I want...even though the trade may not go in my favour the entry and exits are clean. Lately I have noticed the strength of the index at the various pivot points being more relevant than the pivot points in the ETFs. In order of relevance it turns out the the index is first, HGU is second and HGD is third.

Where this leads me is to using the one main chart and just "pretending" that a long position in Global Gold is a bull ETF buy and a short position in Global Gold is a bear ETF buy. The best part about this, down the road, is that I can hold open positions in both the bull and bear funds at the same time. In theory I could open a position in each of the funds with an equal dollar value and hold them all day long and sell at the end of the day and only be down by the commission...an almost 100% hedge.

This also leads me to adopt a strategy that is used in options trading and I thought about applying to ETFs a few months back but had some conceptual troubles with the possible trading plan. More on that another time...the short story is that it includes placing opposing limit orders and catching only the breaking ETF. It needs some work though.

Today being Friday I try to normally not trade, but I tried a couple of trades anyway, no luck, so I decided that I would wait this out and work on some historical charting to check my "One Chart" method. I see now that the price has really just wallowed about with no big moves except out of the gate.

Jeff.

February 12th. Nothing spectacular.

Today was a mostly uneventful day. I marked the two nice entry points for the morning with blue circles. I choked on getting in as I saw them setup, thought "I should really be making these trades" and didn't. Yesterday's early losses had me second guessing my gut. The pivot points were nice and wide due to yesterday's action so when the price dropped to within 3 cents of the primary pivot point, (barely off the bottom of the chart) it should have been my first trade of the day. Then it rallied touched the 1/2R1 mark (dashed red line) it was a key exit and a potential entry into HGD for the slide...if I was quick enough. Considering that the first would have been near a 50 cent clean gain I might have called it a day after one trade...nahhh!

I did get in at the day's high (first green arrow) by buying HGD for the reverse move (Bear ETF) but chickened out (first red) as HGU rallied slightly so I only captured half of the already small move. Later I saw the setup for a possible 200sma resistance and got in just right (second green) and got out at the then bottom (second red).

I missed the middle peak trade just due to trying to wait for a sign that it was actaully going to head back down. It crossed the 1/2R1 too cleanly on the upside for me to enter comfortably either way.

Both were slight winning trades but very small...the whole point though is that I called the two tougher trades, got the direction correct, got in and got out clean enough, although not as potentially profitable as the early stuff.

BTW, the $15.05 peak was yesterday's high that was tested five times and that I missed, I was going to be damned if I didn't take that trade again.

The rest of the day was not work trading as everything was very small...HGD faired no better as the largest move in the afternoon was about 10 cents and it was not clean, lots of chop. For some strange reason I seem to be drawn to trading the choppy stuff, which is why I decided to can the fake trades. I can fake a good moving day so I need to actively trade those days and often they are not known to be good moving days until they are moving...I need to be in trading mode right from the start as often as I can.

Oh, I should mention, that steep rally at about 1015h did not follow any of my current rules for entering a trade...I could have jumped in once it crossed the 200sma on the way up but it was moving too fast to do so. That was when I decided it was going to peak and I would play the downside. I miss my short selling but I have got this figured out now.

Jeff.

February 11th, the followup

This is the balance of yesterday's chart. I was waiting for the 200sma break, and it happened.

I saw the multiple tests of the $15.05 price and pretty much knew what was going to happen, just the exact timing and the extent were question marks. I powered up and checked in just before the last two tests, saw the setup taking shape and left the computer for eight minutes. i didn't enter at the last peak as I figured that there would be one more test to catch before the break...eight minutes later the price had already crossed the 200 on the way down.

HGU chart. The blue circle was my expected move.

So I missed it. I thought that there might be a continuation but did not feel too comfortable taking the trade based on that so I left it alone for the rest of the day.

Checking the HGD, where the long trade would be to catch the drop, the entry would be about $7.71, first target $7.85, second about $8.00. I expect that an exit at $7.95 would have been the most likely but based on the HGU move taking it to $8.05 is not much of a stretch.

So 24 cents per share at 400 shares. At least I know that I was on the right track even if I missed the entry target.

Jeff.

February 11th...the crunch

This morning is turning out to be a great learning experience for me...which means that I lost money so far...it's about 1030h as I type this and I am just going to sit out the rest of the major move in gold.

The first thing that I learned is to not be so bullheaded.

I saw the opening price above the R1 pivot point, this is more likely to indicate an up morning if not a full day of uptrending. The first target should be the R2 and if that is breached then R3. One of these trades, if gotten in early enough, can be followed up all the way with out worrying about exiting on a bit of weakness as the profit is pretty solid, just exit once a pp has been breached on the downside.

The green arrows were my two trades entered as long positions in HGD for the expected pullback in HGU. The Red arrows are the trades that should have happened, the first was soon enough that I was not sure I wanted to try to get in and the 200sma (circled green line) would have been the target. The next two, I was already in HGD and did not get out prior to the very beginning of the move up. The third and last I was just to fearful that the price was peaking and I was getting in where the price was going to head down...two losses tends to make me a bit gunshy. I won't bother figuring out how much I missed out on, it does not matter. What matters is that I learned a bit more than I knew when I started this morning...pay attention to the first price when it gaps over or under certain ranges, get out quicker if it looks like the move is not going to materialize in my favour.

So, why did I try to enter a bear trade under R1?
I don't know.
Why did I let it run when I knew it was more likely to reverse and continue to head up?
I don't know.
Why did I try the exact same move at the R2 and let it run past my "know I'm wrong" point?
I don't know.

Actually I do know. I like to play the downside of a price move so I have a little bias switch in my head that I have a hard time flipping to play the long game. So I saw what could have been perfect setups for the bear play if the price was going to be somewhat range bound or downtrending.

I also hesitate to buy in a momentum move once it has already started. I like to see a pullback to a resistance point to get in. Sadly this keeps me out of a lot of fast moving and big trades. In both of the above mentioned trades had I just sold my HGD position at that point where my gut said "wrong move, get out" I would have been in a better position to have bought HGU to capture the huge rally just before the momentum took over.

So, the hindsight view tells me what I should have done, and that I should have seen it and, if not getting long on HGU at least not getting caught playing HGD.

The price is beyond any of my pivot points right now so my best bet is to wait until lunchtime and check in again. At that point the 200sma will be "caught up" and may indicate what the afternoon may bring. The price may have rounded over as well and perhaps there will be some downside plays to be had.

Jeff.

February 10th, the death of the fake trade

OK, I've had enough of fake trading.

This morning I jotted down a fake trade early on for about an 11 cent gain...then decided I'd had enough of that game and just traded the rest of the calls. Now the morning was pretty flat so I was fighting for the trades but patient enough to wait them out. I was anticipating a nice drop in price over the course of the day and the setups were mostly to the downside. The rallies did not line up with any clean entries so I left them alone and only traded HGD, the bear fund.

I may have mentioned already that I like short sells and they were my favourite trades for a number of reasons...mainly the reasons why nobody seems to like them. They are fast and need a little attention to stay on top of to get nice exits at the bottom of the move. I found that trading HGD (Bear fund) based solely upon the movement of the HGU (Bull fund) was as close as I can get to actually short selling HGU. So other than watching HGD quotes to be sure there is enough volume to get a clean 400 share fill I really don't pay it much attention at all.

I did manage to wait for the 200sma crossover and get in one trade, even if it was not a very big move my concern is more being sure that my calls are correct and I don't suffer anything other than some small losses along the way. I was not able to stay and trade the rest of the afternoon, sadly, as I see now that most of the move I was waiting for happened well after that crossover. I managed to check in a few times up until 1400h and the price was forming that classic saucer shape that just begs for a short sell off of the lip at the end when the price crosses under the 30 sma (red on the chart).

Oh, with the new blog format I am able to post the full sized charts and they come out clearer...click on the image for the blowup and the prices and notes are legible.

The green circle is the area where I placed my fake trade, too congested to try to note with any clarity so I skipped it. Red is the saucer drop off and blue are the afternoon trades that were available and followed my entry criteria...the first two green arrows would have been orders placed in HGD and the last would have been long in HGU for the bounce...I was there for that one but was unable to place the trade...so I guess I just missed it.


This is HGD with the trades reasonably accurately mapped out. There is not much difference between these trades and fake trades under similar circumstances. With the use of market orders instead of limit orders I am seeing about 2 to 4 cents per trade less...but I am making every single trade that I decide I want whereas with limit orders I was only making about a third of them.

1013h Buy $8.76 Sell $8.90 Gain 14 cents ps Return 1.6%
1231h Buy $8.77 Sell $8.80 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.3%
1309h Buy $8.78 Sell $8.81 Gain 3 cents ps Return 0.3%

$ 0.20 gain per share or 2.2% overall return on trades

I choked on the third trade as I actually bailed too soon. It was a "keys locked in car" moment. You know the one...you lock the car and just as the door clicks closed you realize where the keys are. I would rather have an early exit rather than some other boffo order mistake... I only missed out on a little over 10 cents more anyway, even that would have made my day though.

I obviously would have liked to have made even one of the afternoon trades. The other downside is that I only traded 300 shares for the first trade as I realized I forgot to bump my orders up to 400. The extra 100 shares on the second two at least pulled me up to breakeven as they are pretty small trades, at least no losses in there.

It felt good to be active at least...I would have even celebrated a loss today for the sake of being in the trades.

Jeff.

February 9th

Alas...I could not give trading my full attention today again. Once I miss the first few trades I have stopped trying to catch the secondary trades as they are not as lucrative and not as predictable...having said that I still would have made out OK this morning with the later trades


HGU chart.




0933h Buy $13.09 Sell $13.50 Gain 41 cents ps Return 3.1%
1030h Buy $13.12 Sell $13.14 Gain 2 cents ps Return 0.1%
1035h Buy $13.13 Sell $13.23 Gain 10 cents ps Return 0.8%
1117h Buy $13.12 Sell $13.27 Gain 15 cents ps Return 1.1%

$ 0.68 gain per share or 5.1% overall return on trades

All of these trades are strictly by the book, my book anyway, except number three as that was just an attempt to get back in for the anticipated move...I jumped out too soon on trade 2 and realized it soon enough to get back in at an OK point. The problem with doing this is that commission tend to eat up any profits...in these cases I saw $24 gross...$4 after commissions, hardly worth the effort.

This is why I have decided to stick mainly to the pivot point entry setups, less "hopeful" trading and more "numbers" trading.

HGD for the downside trades

0946h Buy $8.93 Sell $9.10 Gain 17 cents ps Return 1.9%
1101h Buy $9.01 Sell $9.14 Gain 13 cents ps Return 1.4%
1131h Buy $9.05 Sell $9.10 Gain 5 cents ps Return 0.5%

$ 0.35 gain per share or 3.8% overall return on trades

These trades don't appear to be "by the book" as I use HGU for trigger signals. So where I might sell a short in a regular margin account I would, instead, just place a long order in HGD as long as the price of HGD has not already headed up. It usually lags by a bit so the timing is pretty decent.

The last trade was a momentum...or better yet, a weakness following a momentum move in HGU...or gold if you want to take it back to the source. HGU jumped quickly and there was no way the price had enough support to continue so the quick downside produced a 5 cent move in HGD...with 400 shares I would take this trade as it is a very high probability small target as long as there was enough depth in the inside quotes...which there was here.

That trade was not according to my rules. I have to have some fun sometimes.

So, all in all the morning would have produced an overall net profit of $206. Although there were no real losing trades I did have two of the seven barely more than break even once commissions would be figured in.

This should have been a 5% return on portfolio day for me.

Jeff.

February 5th, mid-morning update

Today is a crappy day for trading the gold ETFs, they are terribly range bound after opening very strong based on the pre-market surge this morning in the price of gold.

I made three trades and am still up $5 but that is a pretty poor showing but not too bad considering the churning going on. I decided to let it wallow and work this kink out.

I had figured that the opening gap would be closed buy noon so I played HGD bear for the downslide that never really materialized, I was still ahead though. So I switched to HGU to try for what looked like a possible break up after 1000h, against my decided bias for the day, and didn't fair well as there was no solid move. Too much horizontal with lowish volume while in a trade makes me edgy as the longer it plays that way the less likely it becomes that the move will materialize in my favour. I usually try to exit these while in a profit position but will dump within a few cents of my mental stop, usually based on a technical trigger for me.

Yesterday was a day to play with the bear fund and today was a day to play with the bear and bull combined. I am still getting "into" playing the bear against the bull rather than short selling so, even though I faked a lot of trades, it takes a little more on the ball to play these back and forth. The market orders are making this a lot easier to manage.

Now that HGD is well below $10 that puts it into the 400 share position size range for me. I have been using 300 shares and find that the fills are broken but within a penny. They do not trade inside orders of high enough volume to secure a clean full fill in one shot...I am curious how 400 share orders are going to work out for me. Nice to get larger positions under my belt with smaller prices and smaller moves now, this is part of my plan to grow with the account.

Jeff.

February 4th. very short day.

I have no shortage of excuses why I couldn't do much trading today, meetings, generator issues, phone calls...you name it.

Even so I did manage to squeeze in a couple of trades to see how the HGD ETF works with market orders for entry, pretty much exactly as I figured. This will make life a lot easier and get me into more of the trades that I see setting up as a market order is a guaranteed order fill and with these volumes and small spreads they are fairly predictable.

I marked three trades here but I oly managed the first two. Sadly I bailed on the first one as I got in a little too early in the pattern, got jittery and sold...which is not a bad thing as it could have kept going down. The next trade entry was actually in a lower position by a few cents and I managed to recoup some of the loss, I was out by commissions today which is OK for a pair of testing trades, I have done far worse while testing.

The third trade I marked, it was one of those ones that I saw after it started to move, the generator issue kept me away form actually placing the order but it was a good 15 cent move. Small but with this current wallowing I cannot expect much more than that.

HGU followed the pattern that I figured for the day...or at least the one that I anticipated once it got moving. Once the price crosses the 200 sma (green) it usually stays there for a while and I can use pivot points farther away as targets or launch pads. There were a number of decent trades setup here, the one off the start I didn't get into as it setup after some hovering off the start, I expected a quicker momentum move off the bell to establish a low range price around $12.40 for the day but it never happened, so I missed the entry, thought about taking it but decided to wait it out. Even the late afternoon trading was rather choppy and would not have had me staying in for very long on any trades.

This is one of those better luck tomorrow days. The PPs are getting pretty tight right now, there should be a decent move in one direction or the other soon, perhaps tomorrow, and I hope to be in a position to be able to trade it.

Jeff.

February 2nd, HGU and HGD

Today was pretty much like any other day, lots of potential and not any real trading due to circumstances that I have let control me...a whole other story.

Actually, perhaps not. Some have said that in order to be successful in trading you have to treat it as a business and take it seriously. I have not done that yet and perhaps that is my whole problem. I let interruptions get in th eroad of perfectly good trades and today was no exception. I did call and track them but that is easy enough to do now in my head as the pivot points are so predictable now and work as very good targets for both entry and exits.

HGU and the early long plays.

The short story:

0931h Buy $12.20 sell $12.40 Gain 20 cents ps Return 1.6%
(this may not have played out well due to the early entry, so I skip it in the final results)

0934h Buy $12.40 Sell $12.70 Gain 30 cents ps Return 2.4%
0956h Buy $12.80 Sell $13.00 Gain 20 cents ps Return 1.6%

$ 0.50 gain per share or 4.0% overall return on trades

Due to the late morning downtrend HGD would have made some decent trades as well.

I noted the "technical squeeze" circled in red as it was happening. The Friday closing intersecting with all of the moving averages and squeezing the price between them and the 1/2 pivot point just below. On HGU the blue arrow would have been a short sell for me, no question, as that is superb resistance...playing HGD would have been the alternate here, as noted below, the same technical situation was happening in reverse. The blue arrows below are loosely where trades would have been entered. I noted them below for curiosity:

1102h Buy $9.47 Sell $9.63 Gain 16 cents ps Return 1.7%
1150h Buy $9.54 Sell $9.70 Gain 16 cents ps Return 1.7%
1258h Buy $9.80 Sell $10.00 Gain 20 cents ps Return 2.0%

$ 0.52 gain per share or 5.4% overall return on trades

So, The long story is still my hesitation to get serious with this and turn it into a profitable venture. I really have no excuses so this week will be my week to work on the implimentation of some firm plan to get active in the trading. Perhaps not focusing on the open is in my best interest and just aim to start a little later to follow a trend more than trying to nail the faster initial moves that are prone to having interrupted.

Well, either way I am having fun, if I wasn't what would be the point?

Jeff.

ETFs for gold...HGU and HGD. Day 1

ETFs are what they are, an Exchange Traded Fund so their basic price follows the related fund closely with some variance in the actual purchase and sale price due to the auction style of trading, just like a stock in that regard...there is a spread between the bids and asks. Enough about that.

HGU - Horizons Betapro Global Gold Bull Plus Fund
HGD - Horizons Betapro Global Gold Bearl Plus Fund
SPTGD - TSX Global Gold Index
AEM - Agnico-Eagle Mines, a stock for some reference as I am familiar with it and it tends to lead the index slightly.

I will only chart HGU for today's trading (fake)

The short story:

0934h Buy $11.23 Sell $12.00 Gain 77 cents ps Return 6.9%
1009h Buy $12.07 Sell $12.30 Gain 23 cents ps Return 1.9%
1030h Buy $12.31 Sell $12.50 Gain 19 cents ps Return 1.5%
1105h Buy $12.31 Sell $12.51 Gain 20 cents ps Return 1.6%
1154h Buy $12.32 Sell $12.44 Gain 12 cents ps Return 1.0%
1258h Buy $12.62 Sell $12.89 Gain 27 cents ps Return 2.1%

$ 1.78 gain per share or 15% overall return on trades

That translates into $474 virtual dollars profit or 11.9% return on portfolio.

The slightly longer story:

The main reason that I did not actually trade these today was due to the fact that I slept in, health issue and missed alarm, I think I did not wset it properly. I ended up with 10 minutes to do my chart setups for a whole new bunch of stocks and funds. So I saw the first trade setup and just did not have all my ducks in a row.

I followed some pretty hard and fast rules for these trades though once I got them going. Being a newish trading setup I decided, after missing that first large move, that I was asking for trouble trying to make some real money today.

Entries were based on limit orders set 2 cents higher than the pivot point being tested. I could also use market orders to be sure of a full fill each time but I will keep to limit orders to reduce the possible jumpy trade price filling me higher than I would like.

Exits were based on the next pivot target, following if momentum was good and exiting before targets if the buying weakened.

I did track a few trades for HGD, the bear version, but didn't count them as they were less than stellar, profitable but small and really were against the trend altogether, just for practise.

Jeff.